Brian McLaren Interviewed by Scot McKnight

The following interview of Brian McLaren by Scot McKnight at a recent conference is an interesting opportunity to hear McLaren's answers to three pre-approved questions. McKnight does not really debate or dialogue with McLaren: he just reads the questions. So it is really like a structured speech by McLaren.

What I found interesting was the way in which McLaren obfuscates on doctrine and sounds the clarion call with utter clarity on social work and politics. He expresses frustration with those who read him to see if his views are compatible with biblical truth saying that when he is in the presence of people like that it feels like the inquisition. He advocates reading an author for what one can get out of it rather than to see if the author is orthodox, which is to present a false dilemma between two kinds of reading with two different purposes - both of which are perfectly legitimate. To suggest that only one way of reading is legitimate when one has been accused of teaching false doctrine is pretty self-serving and question-begging.

He says he was "stunned" that people could read his book, Everything Must Change, and then ask questions about the doctrine of the atonement - as if to think of a question on atonement after reading a book about Jesus is somehow surprising. He says "I talked about war, I talked about poverty, I talked about the environment - and all they wanted to talk about was atonement theory." The scorn in his voice here is crystal clear: how provincial and uncaring these people must be! Yet, if the greatest need of the poor is to know Jesus and the eternal salvation he offers, then it is cruel and unfeeling to place socialist ideology above the spiritual needs of poor people. Yet this is what he does - and then calls his critics uncaring because they object to his rejection of the penal substitution doctrine of the atonement, which is the heart of the gospel.

The discussion on universalism in the third part is not very interesting to me because I don't think we can know or are supposed to know whether it is somehow possible that more than we think will end up saved. All we know from Scripture is that eternal punishment is eternal and some are eternally punished. To go beyond this is dangerous. But it is interesting to see McLaren dancing around the question like a politician who knows he will lose votes if he gives a clear answer no matter which side he comes down on. It simply reinforces the impression that theology qua theology is not very interesting to McLaren; it is simply a tool that can be used to motivate certain people to embrace left-wing positions.

Answering a question about whether some of the things he writes are "provocatively ambiguous" McLaren compares his approach to that of Soren Kierkegaard, who said that when you are talking to people who are in the grip of an illusion, who are wrong but don't know they are wrong, it is difficult to be indirect. This shows what McLaren thinks of his "theological critics." Of course, it is not the liberals who criticize his theology; they have no problem with his theology because it leads him to agree with them on what they deeply care about: namely, politics. But conservatives are the ones who are concerned about possible false teaching and McLaren shows very little patience for them in this interview. They are the ones who are in the grip of an illusion and are so obviously wrong even though they can't see it. And why is he so sure they are wrong? Because they don't accept his leftist views on politics and ethics.

When asked about whether his rejection of "the Greco-Roman narrative" in A New Kind of Christianity does not contradict his affirmation of the faith of the Christian Church in Generous Orthodoxy, McLaren proceeds to redefine the word "faith." In so doing he sounds a lot like Rudolph Bultmann insofar as he makes a distinction between "faith" as trust and dependence on God and "faith" in the sense clearly meant in the question, which was "faith" in the sense of the main teachings of Christianity: the Gospel and the cardinal doctrines flowing from and supporting the Gospel. McLaren makes a great point of affirming the need for "faith" in the Bultmannian sense, which Evangelicals would not deny, but fails to go to affirm the importance of the Biblical Gospel and major doctrines that flesh out the Gospel, which would be just as important to Evangelicals as "faith" in the sense of trust.

McLaren shows a tendency here to view doctrine in a pragmatic manner; true doctrine is doctrine which leads those who hold it to take up a properly left-wing political stance. False doctrine is any doctrine that leads people to oppose left-wing politics. Doctrine is not true or false in itself; it becomes true or false only when its political outcomes are observed.

McLaren is not shy about specifying who in church history is right and who is wrong. He lists St. Patrick as over against Constantine, St. Francis as over against the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in their colonial era and their crusading era. He also identifies with the approach taken by the Anabaptists and the Radical Reformation and in the modern era with movements like the Social Gospel, Liberation Theology, Black Theology, Latino Theology, Feminist and Eco Theologies and so on. Ironically, he gives this list of the "Good Guys" right after criticizing those who look in the Church for only one line of purity stretching down through church history. One wonders if he really objects to the methodology or the conclusions because he seems to be utilizing the same methodology by constructing his "alternative history" of what I suppose could be termed "counter-orthodoxy."

If you don't want to invest the time in reading his books, this 18 minute video is an excellent way to acquaint yourself with his main ideas in a first hand way in a short time.

Q | Conversations on Being a Heretic from Q Ideas on Vimeo.